Ahead of the India Art Fair in New Delhi, an impressive curated show opened at the Kiran Nadar Museum of Art in Noida. Because she wields enormous clout as an art buyer, Kiran Nadar can expect a sterling turnout at her events, but the opening of An Unfinished Portrait proved so disappointing, it moved her to write an appeal to the art fraternity about the "dismal attendance". Appealing to the art community to "make the effort and see this exhibition", she emailed: "It's an exhibition very close to my heart and attempts to reflect on the intersections between a collection, artist, critic, curator, other practitioners…".
Are institutions in Noida and Gurgaon at a disadvantage when it comes to attracting viewers? The opening party of the fair at KNMA Saket might indicate so but, often, previews, launches and openings in the art world invite participation in proportion to the volume of liquor served. Shut the bar and the attendance will thin rapidly. No surprises then that events around the India Art Fair involve a fair bit of pushing and prodding. Juggling attendance in a city with chronic traffic jams and given its long distances, a full house for curated walks, talks, book launches, dissertations and demonstrations might be a tad difficult, but is the intention even there? Cocktails attract a full house - but retrospectives? Panel discussions?
The art fair has become an annual interstice around which many galleries plan their calendars, which is to the good - but is there perhaps danger of overkill? In the absence of an art district, the attention is squarely on the fair grounds with its unruly traffic, but even here the calendar of activities can prove challenging to even the most enthusiastic.
The point of it all is to question if an audience at all exists for art-related activities? Most institutions have to post an aggressive campaign to fill seats or a hall, and sometimes that includes reaching out to those who have little interest in art but are brought in purely as bodies on hire to impress the few genuine art lovers. A city of 16 million people might reasonably hope to serve up a few hundred of its brightest for art events but that is a dismal hope.
Perhaps the solution might lie in having a calendar of activities dispersed over the year, when one might reasonably hope for people to have more time available. If the past is any indication, this is not true. The capital, perhaps more than other cities, is pampered with a busy cultural schedule, yet it takes poor advantage of it. Perhaps this is to be expected from a city that looks to fashion shows as both entertainment and culture, but its constant whining that "nothing happens in this city" is a silly lament. Two stunning retrospectives currently showing at the National Gallery of Modern Art, one on the celebrated contemporary artist Subodh Gupta, the other on the dazzling modernism of Amrita Sher-Gil, should have queues lined up outside, such as those that are routine in the West, where visitors sometimes spend a few hours in the hope of being dazzled by exhibitions of equivalent excellence.
The fault, therefore, lies not with the institutions or commercial enterprises that continue to peruse outreach programmes in spite of only a little interest, but in the way we consume art as tamasha. It is sometimes easy to rail against the state for not doing enough to raise an art consciousness among the public, but it is equally important to ask if the public is deserving of better. If art is a marker of a civilisation, India's current record is indeed a pitiful one.
Kishore Singh is a Delhi-based writer and art critic. These views are personal and do not reflect those of the organisation with which he is associated
